80 BICKNELL: FERNS AND FLOWERING PLANTS OF NANTUCKET ~ 
parviflora.’ Others have also found the plant there, for Mr. 
Floyd’s notes refer to collections as follows: Orange street, 1904, 
Mrs. Nellie F. Flynn; roadside near Maxcys Pond, 1905, Joseph 
R. Churchill, both determined as O. cruciata Nutt. 
Notwithstanding the narrowly linear petals of this the smallest 
of our Oenotheras there can be little doubt that its real affinity is 
not with O. cruciata, a near relative of O. biennis, but rather with 
O. Oakesiana with which it agrees closely in pubescence and to 
some extent in the form of the capsule. O¢enothera cruciata, which 
would be quite out of its known range on Nantucket, is an alto- 
gether larger and to an extent a glabrate species becoming thinly 
papillose hirsute with stiff spreading hairs. It differs throughout 
from the Nantucket plant; the bracts subtending the flowers are 
broad based, not narrowly tapering or petiolulate; the sepal tips 
are twice longer; the linear petals are materially shorter, never 
apparently becoming much more than half the length of the longest 
in O. stenopetala. As compared with O. Oakesiana, O. stenopetala is 
a much smaller plant; its pubescence although similar is less 
dense and canescent, sometimes taking an appressed strigillose 
character, especially on the broader based and shorter capsule; 
the cauline leaves are longer petioled and less sinuate or not at all 
so; the bracts are more narrowed to the base, the sepal tips much 
shorter and subterminal, the petals different beyond comparison. 
An ambiguous Oenothera, which grew near O. stenopetala, seemed 
quite intermediate in pubescence and leaf characters between 
that species and O. muricata and appeared like a hybrid between 
them. The flowers were very small but with the petals quite as 
broad as long, mostly 10 mm. or less in length and breadth, a 
few as much as 15 mm. This plant is also suggestive of O. 
Oakesiana but the pubescence is coarser, the leaves more entire, 
the capsules stouter and less crowded and with more foliaceous 
bracts and the sepal tips are terminal and very short. 
* OENOTHERA LAMARCKIANA DeVries. 
Not O. Lamarckiana Seringe (1828). See Davis, Bull. Torrey 
Club 39: 519-533. pl. 37-39. 1912. 
The occurrence of this now storied plant on Nantucket as an 
estray from cultivation has already been reported by MacDougal 
